Now the Apple //c?...I remember that being crap. Perhaps it was the first scissor board I used. Anyone know? We're talking 1980-85 technology.
The IIc used yellow Alps, IIRC. I remember it not being very good. Not sure about the IIe and plus, though.
Found an image of them:Show Image(http://apple1org.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/203_0001.jpg?w=595)
Blue Alps is softer than white Alps; I don't consider a comparison with white Alps to be favourable!I got a blue board and a complicated white board, and the white one feels much nicer, but mainly because the blues are quite inconsistent from one to the next, I’m guessing their click leaves wore out a bit. I’m going to try to take them apart and bend them into a bit better shape, but in the mean time: why do you not like white Alps? Also: what’s the difference between white and blue? Is it just the springs? [I can’t find any particularly clear explanations of this from searching around this site / the web.]
Since you will wish you'd never asked, turn away now!! ; )
That's second on the list of Things Alps Switches Are Infamous For: poor longevity, leading to degraded feel over time.
Nobody knows how blue and white Alps switches differ. White Alps switches (mostly?) have reduced size switchplates, but why would that affect feel? They're specified identically (70 gf for blue, 0.686 N for white, which is the same: 1 gf = 0.98 cN) but blue Alps switches do feel different. Possibly one of many changes of materials. Sandy has mentioned on his website about the factory application of dry lubricant to the slider, but I don't have a clear understanding of his beliefs on this matter, and I've not discussed it with him thus far. Maybe Alps stopped this practice.
My perception of blue Alps (and it's only a perception, although this is a late 80s keyboard that's been stored in a damp, dusty room for years) is that the return spring is fairly light. Once you've passed the tactile point, the switch feels quite light from there on down, and the actuation force is not far above ideal. This strong–light sequence is quite interesting, the opposite way around to Cherry MX clear, which is light–strong (light tactile over a strong return spring).
All my white Alps keyboards feels stiffer and more balky — you've got to hit the keys harder to avoid missed keystrokes. Silencium's force graph suggests white has a slightly shorter pretravel (less build-up time for the tactile peak, requiring a harder strike) of 0.3 mm less, and 15 gf (or cN?) more force after the tactile peak, i.e. the slider drops more readily. The latter isn't part of the specification. The brief spec I've got for blue doesn't cite pretravel.
To be sure of comparison in feel, you'd need to take a variety of keyboards and measure the force curve across a selection of switches from each, and build up a picture.
In my case, I'm talking solely about pine whites (1993 or earlier) which are supposed to be the good version. Ironically, the bamboo whites in my ETC Power Glide 105 (no slits, therefore 1993 or later) feel a lot smoother and cleaner, even though the keyboard is scuzzy and has melted keycaps (I've not tried connecting it up). Those, though, are "plum" whites, which are a real mystery. One possibility that I've considered, is that around 1992 or so, Alps needed to increase factory capacity and asked their long-time manufacturing partner Forward Electronics to tool up for SKCL/SKCM production, which is why a) these switches have wholly new moulds with hand-scrawled mould numbering and wobbly Alps logos and b) the slits disappeared from both these AND "regular" Alps, i.e. they appear to have been manufactured in parallel. I don't, sadly, have any dates for ANY of these strange white switches.
Alps switches in the 90s got pretty weird. alps.tw has found examples with nothing more than "GA" written in the mould, for example. The internals are all genuine, suggesting that they're not pirate — the true "fake" Alps switches (designed to truly fool the user) had Himake internals. The strange white switches also sometimes have the upper shell logo and numbering upside down. I can't see anything like that coming out of Japan, which is why I suspect Forward made them, just as they made the later simplified Alps switches.
(Discussion of these strange white switches isn't currently covered on the DT wiki pages on Alps switches (http://deskthority.net/wiki/Alps_SKCL/SKCM_series).)
Figuring out Alps will take longer yet, but we're making real progress.
Which clones did Apple use? That's news to me. Apple used SMK second generation switches, but they're not Alps clones.